Tag: Writing

I’ve traveled a long, long distance since 2016, and I’m so happy to be home!

I started blogging in 2013, when I read a book called The Clique. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a fluffy series of paperbacks about a clique of middle school girls who are, in sharp contrast to the plucky heroines of the world, shockingly materialistic and mean. They loved lip gloss, Seven for All Mankind jeans, and put-downs, and everyone (include me) loved them. Looking hungrily online for more of Massie, Alicia, Dylan, Kristen, and Kuh-laire, I found the wonderful world of blah-gging.

I eventually moved on from writing about The Clique to writing about their interests. My focus shifted to a little project some of y’all will remember as “Black Hat Belle”, which was shaped around a pseudo-fictional fashionable socialite, who, very predictably, was not accurately portrayed by a thirteen year old. Black Hat Belle mostly gave (terrible) makeup recommendations, posted about designer brands she definitely couldn’t afford, and lied about her age.

When I graduated middle school, I decided I needed a reset. I chose the name “Swallowed in Serendipity”, partly because it was alliterative, but also because it was very, very true for what blogging had become to me. Serendipity is basically a happy coincidence, and it was certainly a very happy coincidence that a series of books about snobby preteen girls from upstate New York had brought me to a medium where, for the first time, I could write whatever I wanted, and people would see it, reply, and maybe actually – a la *gasp* – like it! In a world where middle school girls are not exactly viewed as the most capable or intelligent, it shrouded me in anonymity and gave me a platform for my voice to be heard (even if it was just ice-cold takes about feminism and reviews of drugstore makeup).

For a while, I was very “swallowed” in the blogging world. I posted almost weekly, worked laboriously on headers and backgrounds, and even made feeble attempts to market myself (unfortunately, fourteen year old me was no Kris Jenner). But as I started high school, and was confronted by the wide world of Friends, Boys, and School, because it Really Really Matters Now and Oh Shit, Your Future is Right In Front of You, my blogging fell off.

It’s been a very long road since then. In no particular order: I discovered lattes, learned how to do eyeliner, got my first boyfriend, dumped my first boyfriend, grew apart then closer to then apart from friends, experienced Failure (with a gosh darn capital F!) for the first time, changed my favorite color from peach to baby pink, watched a sunset on the balcony of a sorority house in Berkeley, California (pictured above), pulled all-nighters to do procrastinated projects, watered down my political views to please the cutthroat world of high school, and kind of lost who I am.

Here’s what I still know about me, the work in progress – blogging is one of the few things I really, really truly loved to do, and it deserves another shot. Also, I bought a $50 domain name and everything, so I have to stick to it now, So, reader, if you’re still here two years later and after this long diatribe, let’s do the damn thing!